after so much preparation..

after forcing myself to memorize 400+ drug names, classes, mechanisms, side effects...

All I can say is,

Part A: Pure memorizing. At least for this part I can safely say I got about 31 marks out of 35 for sure. Thanks to the 2 days of intensive cramming sessions I had with Andrea and Champ... and thanks to Champ's interesting way of memorizing stuff. Made us laugh till our sides split... but who knows! It actually came in useful in the exam. Completed this part in less than 30 minutes.

Part B: Pure memorizing. But also application. Choose 5 put of 6 questions. Only for 2 of the 5 I can say for sure I am really very confident. The other 3, I can only say I got about half the marks for each maybe... hopefully. It wasn't easy. And there was just too much memory work involved.

Spent hell lot of time on Part B... about an hour and a half... choosing the questions and squeezing my brain dry trying to think of what to include and what I missed out. Stupid gesture. Left with just 30 minutes for the last part, Part C, essay question.

Part C: Essay question. Application. And consolidation of all the topics. Andrea told me the day before he might come out with something that links every single topic together and make us write an essay. I laughed it off and said maybe he will just give some questions on the lectures that were linked, like the heart and circulatory system lectures, and the depression lecture. And also maybe the endocrine lecture, since he kept emphasizing that it was important. Actually, I thought he might make us write an essay about dopamine since it affects a lot of organs.

BUT WHO KNOWS.... this guy is MORE SADISTIC THAN THAT.

For biology students or med students.. u will know how I felt when I saw the question..

"A hypothetical drug is administered intravenously to a laboratory rat in an experiment. Drug A.... exerts dose-dependent stimulatory muscarinic actions on all relevant tissues and organs, including the brain..... Describe the specific tissue/organ responses that are expected from Drug A's actions, based on your knowledge in pharmacology of the autonomic nervous system as well as the various organ/tissue systems. For EACH of the tissue and organ effects induced by drug A, suggest another drug (and the drug class it belongs to) that can antagonize the observed muscarinic responses, i.e. physiological antagonism of drug A."

So you think that's all... that part's fine. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that.. coz loads of drug names and classes and all just started flooding into my brain. My 15 marks was safe.

And then I saw the next sentence to the question.... and cursed out loud, "妈的..."

"For drugs that can counter the effects of drug A, muscarinic antagonists, adrenergic agonists and antagonists are NOT accepted here."

All the drug names and classes went into the recycling bin of my harddisk. Every single one that I could think of was either a muscarinic antagonist, an adrenergic agonist or antagonist. Bye bye 15 marks.

Hope I got the 10 marks for the second part at least. Glad I went thru it with Andrea and Champ the day before.

Really grateful for my study buddies this semester. They were really encouraging and were a great help to my revision. The teamwork was synergistic. Teaching each other better ways to work things out and studying... heh studying in school was really much more enjoyable than suffering alone at home. At least I have study buddies to do crazy things together with. And thanks Jimmy NONO for giving a very last minute good luck before pharm... though it didn't really work... hehe.. and thanks for my friends for being very accomodating and letting me whine and whine to them while I was mugging for this very disgusting pharm paper.

Year 2s, be warned. Pharmaco ain't as easy as it appears!